Supporting Social-Emotional and Mental Health Needs of Young Children Through Part C Early Intervention: Results of a 50-State Survey

This report examines features of states’ Part C Early Intervention programs that help them identify and serve infants and toddlers with social-emotional delays and mental health conditions. A 50-state survey conducted by the National Center for Children in Poverty and Georgetown University Center for Children and Families asked state Part C Coordinators about their programs’ […]

Young Children in Deep Poverty: Racial/Ethnic Disparities and Child Well-Being Compared to Other Income Groups

Nine percent of young U.S. children live in deep poverty, with state rates ranging from 17 percent in Mississippi to 4 percent in Utah. The families of these children have incomes below 50 percent of the federal poverty line, or less than $10,289 for a family of one parent and two children. These figures, based […]

The Voices of Michigan’s Early Care and Education Teachers: Children’s Challenging Behavior, Expulsion, Disparities, and Needed Program Supports

Michigan policymakers have a long history of leadership in addressing the social-emotional needs of the state’s infants and young children so that they can learn and thrive in their homes and in early care and education programs. The state’s investments in healthy social-emotional development of very young children include home visiting services by infant mental […]

New York City Pre-K Leadership Study

A key challenge for the Early Care and Education (ECE) field is identifying key features of program quality that matter for children’s learning and social-emotional outcomes. In recent years, the role of leaders in ECE programs has been recognized as critical to achieving and maintaining effective teaching and other aspects of quality.1 These leaders are […]

Early Care and Education Teacher Well-being: Associations with Children’s Experience, Outcomes, and Workplace Conditions: A Research-to-Policy Brief

Learn about our Research Connections project. Identifying features of early care and education (ECE) settings that positively affect children’s early learning and development is a critical challenge for the field. Most research related to this challenge has focused on structural features of ECE quality, such as teacher-child ratios and teacher credentials, and on process quality, […]

Helping Early Care and Education Programs Assess Family Engagement Practices and Plan Improvements: Results of the Georgia Family Engagement Planning Tool Pilot

Learn about our Improving the Odds for Young Children project. Family engagement is now recognized by early childhood educators as a critical component of early care and education (ECE) programs. This recognition stems from a body of research showing the important role of family engagement in children’s early learning and development. While classroom quality assessments […]

Learning about Young Children’s Challenging Behavior and Impacts on Programs and Families: A State-wide Survey of Virginia’s Early Care and Education Teachers

Learn about our Supporting Young Children’s Mental Health project. This report presents the efforts of leaders in Virginia to learn more about teachers’ experience with children who demonstrate challenging behavior in center-based and home-based ECE settings. These leaders partnered with the National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP) to design and implement a survey of […]

How States Use Medicaid to Cover Key Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Services: Results of a 50-State Survey (2018 Update)

Learn about our Supporting Young Children’s Mental Health project. There is now substantial evidence that young children’s mental health plays a critical role in their early learning and school readiness, long-term school success and self-sufficiency, and future health and mental health outcomes. Fortunately, many states are working to strengthen supports for infants’ and young children’s […]

The Voices of Maine’s Early Care and Education Teachers: Children with Challenging Behavior in Classrooms and Home-based Child Care

Learn about our Supporting Young Children’s Mental Health project. This report presents findings from a survey of Maine’s early care and education (ECE) teachers and providers about their experiences related to young children with challenging behavior. These experiences included young children displaying different types of challenging behavior, children leaving the program due to challenging behavior, […]

How Studies of QRIS Measure Quality Improvement Activities: An Analysis of Measures of Training and Technical Assistance

Learn about our Research Connections project. A growing body of research documents the implementation, performance, and validity of Quality Rating Improvement Systems (QRIS), now operating in about 40 states. Despite differences in design, all QRIS have the common goal of improving the quality of ECE programs; each of these systems offers some form of professional […]